Janice Dickinson can consider herself one lucky "world's first supermodel."
The former star of Surreal Life and America's Next Top Model spent Tuesday night in the hospital being treated for a concussion suffered in a hit-and-run accident, according to a statement today from Dickinson's rep, Brad Taylor.
The publicist said that Dickinson was headed home via Los Angeles' 405 Freeway when the SUV she was riding in was pushed into the center divider by a truck, the driver of which then skedaddled after the accident.
A production assistant was behind the wheel of the SUV at the time, driving Dickinson, her makeup artist, Gebe Giesner, and her stylist, Duke Stanton, Taylor said.
Dickinson, 51, despite wearing a seatbelt, banged her head on the windshield, per Taylor's statement, and the group was immediately taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The erstwhile America's Next Top Model judge was diagnosed with concussion and held overnight for observation.
The California Highway Patrol could not immediately confirm the details of the smash-up.
Taylor, meanwhile, was quick to turn the mishap into a promotional opportunity.
"After, review doctors gave a clean bill of health and Janice is expected to be back in fine form in time for her second season of The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency," Taylor said, referring to the ongoing Oxygen reality series chronicling the launch of Dickinson's own springboard for aspiring cover girls. Season two premieres Jan. 10.
Dickinson, who in the 1970s and '80s was considered pretty hot stuff, reached a new generation of fans/stupefied onlookers when she joined America's Next Top Model in 2003, where she reveled in pointing out nearly perfect-looking girls' flaws for four seasons. Dickinson later said that she was fired from the show, after being "labeled a bitch."
"America's Next Top Model is good TV. But it's not 7th Avenue,” she said in an interview with Radar magazine in August 2005. "I was just telling the truth and I was saving these girls from going out there and being told that they're too short, too fat, their skin's not good enough. I was to ANTM what Simon Cowell is to American Idol."
The Everything About Me Is Fake…And I'm Perfect author then signed up to be a roommate on the fifth season of The Surreal Life, giving her a prime place to sound off on her "world's first supermodel" status while trading barbs with ex-Apprentice villain Omarosa Manigault.
And despite the snickers she has provoked by insisting that she's still an international superstar, Dickinson is quick to assure people of her self-assigned place in modeling history.
"I am the world's first supermodel," she told Radar. "These network people are just angry people who were not around during the disco days and didn't see that I was truly on the cover of every single magazine. They can say anything they want on America's Next Top Model. I don't give a rat's ass; I know who I am. I worked for Vogue."